What is needed are policies for sustainable, equitable, and democratic
growth. This is the reason for development. Development is not about
helping a few people get rich or creating a handful of pointless
protected industries that only benefit the country's elite; it is not
about bringing in Prada and Benetton, Ralph Lauren or Louis Vuitton,
for the urban rich and leaving the rural poor in their misery. Being
able to buy Gucci handbags in Moscow department stores did not mean
that country had become a market economy. Development is about
transforming societies, improving the lives of the poor, enabling
everyone to have a chance at success and access to health care and
education.
-- Joseph Stiglitz
Globalization and its discontents. New York: Norton, 2002. p.252